How to connect Atlassian Jira Service Management or ServiceNow with AWS Cloud
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There are lots of benefits to connecting your IT Service Management (ITSM) tools with your cloud ecosystem, ranging from improved governance and cost control to enabling greater developer agility. (For more on this topic, check out our 6 Benefits of Integrating ITSM and AWS blog)
But once you decide to go down the integration path, how do you actually do it?
In AWS, the Service Management Connector enables you to connect your ServiceNow or Atlassian Jira Service Management tools to AWS cloud operations and services.
This means you can provision, manage, and operate native AWS resources and capabilities in your ITSM tooling, such as ServiceNow and Atlassian Jira.
You can connect these environments yourself, or if you have a lot of customisations and bespoke requirements you could speak to an integration-as-a-service provider (like us!) about creating a custom Service Management Connector for you.
So, *what* are we connecting?
ITSM tools
ITSM is a framework that helps organisations manage and deliver IT services to customers. ITSM teams define the processes and procedures for common activities in their organisations. Typically these cover areas like incident management, problem management, change management, and service level management.
Your ServiceNow or Jira Service Management tools are often where all this knowledge and value is collected. They are where established processes and technology come together, and are the go-to resource for people requesting, building or using IT Services.
Organisations have typically invested a great deal of time and effort into honing and formalising their ITSM practices and there’s a rich history of collaboration, experience and yes (often) pain from how you got there. People trust their Service Management tool as a first point of call to get something done. They know typically if something can be done in these systems, it’s typically an approved and appropriate way to do it. It’s safe.
AWS cloud operations services
AWS has 100’s of cloud services your teams may want to use. These range from core compute, to workspaces, to application integrations tools and more.
Using AWS native cloud services (ie, those built for cloud) is the simplest way to gain cloud benefits such as scale, agility and cost savings. Utilising AWS cloud operations services allows you to provision, manage, secure and support those cloud-native services.
Examples of these cloud operations services include:
How can I connect ITSM and AWS?
Connecting your chosen ITSM tool with AWS Service Management Connector allows you to combine all of your custom people and process domain knowledge with cloud native services.
AWS’s Service Manager Connectors for ServiceNow and Atlassian Jira are an easy way to establish connections:
What should I consider when starting out?
1. Set-up and configuration
If you aren’t familiar with a Connector it can take some setup and configuration to get it working properly.
2. Level of customisation
You are likely to have invested in establishing business rules, workflows and processes in ServiceNow that may require additional customisation
3. AWS product curation
The Connector supports a wide range of AWS Services - you may need help in curating the products that are available to your teams. This may involve Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, AWS Service Catalogue knowledge.
4. Security and access controls
Additionally, the Connector requires security and access controls to be used effectively and organisations may need help in understanding how to correctly set these up.
5. Support and Maintenance
Finally, as you continue to use the Connector, you‘ll need to maintain and support it. Consider whether you’ll do that internally or work with a partner.
Okay I want to go ahead - what’s next?
Great! If you want to get started yourself, here are some simple instructions on installing the ServiceNow Connector and the Atlassian Jira Service Management Connector.
ServiceNow
How to install the AWS Service Management Connector For ServiceNow
- From the ServiceNow Store, search for and download the AWS Service Management Connector.
- Navigate to the "Installed Applications" section in the ServiceNow instance and click on the "Import" button.
- Select the downloaded AWS Service Management Connector file and click "Upload."
- Once the Connector has been imported, navigate to the "AWS Connections" section in the ServiceNow instance to configure the connection to the AWS environment.
Atlassian Jira Service Management
How to install the AWS Service Management Connector, for Jira Service Management:
- Log in to your Jira instance as an administrator.
- Navigate to the "Apps" menu and select "Find new apps"
- Search for "AWS Service Management Connector" and click on the "Install" button
- Review the terms of the Connector, and click "Agree and Install"
- Once the installation is complete, navigate to the "Apps" menu again and select "Manage apps"
- Find the AWS Service Management Connector in the list of installed apps, and click on the "Configure" button
- Provide your AWS access key and secret key, and click "Connect"
- Once the Connector is connected, you can start using it to manage your AWS services directly from your Jira instance.
Or if you’d like to dive deeper, and discuss how to customise the Connector for your environments, get in touch!
About Cloudsoft Fusion
Cloudsoft is an official launch partner for the AWS Service Managment Connector for ServiceNow and Jira Service Management Cloud.
This means we assisted AWS with the development, customisation and implementation of the AWS Connector for ServiceNow and Atlassian Jira. In the process of which we’ve developed more knowledge and hands-on expertise with AWS Connectors than anyone else in the world.
We’ve channelled this expertise into building customised Connectors for major enterprises, enabling them to seamlessly integrate their tried and tested ITSM with AWS cloud.
